Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: NFS vs RFS
Message-ID: <1988Mar29.175648.801@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3845@chinet.UUCP> <930@nusdhub.UUCP>, <4192@chinet.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 88 17:56:48 GMT

> ...The type
> of struct passed to ioctl is *device dependent*.  How is a dissimilar
> remote machine going to prepare a canonical form of something known
> only to a different machine?  ...

How can you prepare a canonical form of something known only to your
kernel, to do an ioctl on the local machine?  The answer is, you have
to know how.  Either you have to know what the recipient is expecting,
or you have to use some standard language that will be translated
automatically into what the recipient is expecting.  Putting the recipient
on a different machine on the other side of a network adds more ways for
the two ends to misunderstand each other, but does not alter the basic
nature of the problem:  the sender has to know what he's doing.

(This is yet another case of a general phenomenon:  networks don't add
any new problems, they just break all the simplistic old solutions.)
-- 
"Noalias must go.  This is           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
non-negotiable."  --DMR              | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry